Various global or local communication networks (the Internet, the World Wide Web, local area networks and the like) offer a user a vast amount of information. The information includes a multitude of contextual topics, such as but not limited to, news and current affairs, maps, company information, financial information and resources, traffic information, games and entertainment related information. Users use a variety of client devices (desktop, laptop, notebook, smartphone, tablets and the like) to have access to rich content (like images, audio, video, animation, and other multimedia content from such networks).
Generally speaking, a given user can access a resource on the communication network by two principle means. The given user can access a particular resource directly, either by typing an address of the resource (typically an URL or Universal Resource Locator, such as www.webpage.com) or by clicking a link in an e-mail or in another web resource. Alternatively, the given user may conduct a search using a search engine to locate a resource of interest. The latter is particularly suitable in those circumstances, where the given user knows a topic of interest, but does not know the exact address of the resource she is interested in.
When the given user runs a web search using the search engine, he or she generally has two priorities. He or she wants the search engine to locate the most relevant results and he or she wants the results relatively quickly. To at least partially address these concerns, it is known to present the user using a search engine with query suggestions. For example, in response to a user typing a query “Molly” into the Google™ search engine, the user gets a list of suggestions in a drop down menu, namely “Molly Ringwald”, “Molly Maid”, etc. The general idea behind the suggestions is to enable a more user-friendly search experience and to assist the user in exploring a subject of interest. For example, the user may not know exactly what query will provide the information he or she wants; search suggestions can help the user to find desired or related information. The user then can browse the search results and select a link that he or she is desirous of perusing.
Thus, in order to assist the person conducting the search, a search engine can suggest additional queries to the searcher. There are a variety of technologies the search engine can use to identify the additional queries, and each of these technologies will typically result in a large set of queries that the engine can potentially suggest. However, presenting the entire set is often not desirable because many of the queries may contain offensive language or relate to illegal activities and the like.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,719,246 issued on May 6, 2014 to Williams et al. teaches methods and computer-storage media for generating and presenting a suggested search query. Responsive to receiving a user-devised search parameter, a suggested search query is identified. A suggested search query might be generated using various techniques, such as by applying an n-gram language model. A classification of the suggested search query is determined, and the suggested search query is presented together with a visual indicator, which signifies the classification. In some cases, the search system includes a search-query assistant including a suggested-query filter and a data-cleanup function that removes noisy parameters and/or generated suggestions.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0192318 published on Aug. 16, 2007 to Ramer et al. teaches a method and system for operating a mobile search suggestion dictionary. A list of expected search queries associated with a search vertical is created, the list is ordered based on at least one factor, and the ordered list of search queries is presented to a mobile communication facility for user selection. In some cases, an authorization to view certain content such as adult content may be used by an individual to set an authorization using a logged administrator's request. For example, a parent may want to ensure that their child is not able to be presented adult content on a mobile communication facility. An authorization facility may have key words that an administrator can accept or block from a search query entered into the query entry facility of the child's mobile communication facility. An authorization facility may combine elements of a taxonomy-based authorization with a keyword-based authorization.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,725,485 issued on May 25, 2010 to Sahami et al. teaches systems and methods for generating query suggestions using contextual information. A search engine receives a query from an end-user. The search engine executes the query on a content database and identifies a set of matching content. The search engine utilizes the matching content to generate a query vector describing the end-user query. The search engine searches a repository of other vectors, called “centroids,” to produce a ranked set of centroids matching the query vector. These centroids are converted into search queries and form a set of candidate queries. The search engine filters the candidate queries to identify ones that are likely to be meaningful to the end-user. The selected candidate queries are returned to the end-user as query suggestions.